


Directions for Use: Apply Liberally, Allow to Soothe

by CopperCaravan



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fera Shepard, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:00:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4416737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the beginning of Mass Effect 2; Shepard has a quick check-up and Joker doesn't care about patient confidentiality, apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Directions for Use: Apply Liberally, Allow to Soothe

          Shepard holds the little mirror in one hand and drags the other across her face.

          Her clothes and armor hide most of her. From her steel tipped toes to her leather clad fingers, she’s covered. She’d insisted that Miranda find her something for casual wear with a decently high collar. If Cerberus has over four billion credits to throw away on a dead slab of meat and tubes, they can damn well afford a shirt that covers her clavicles.

          Her hair’s shorter— _of course it is,_ she thinks, _I was probably bald when they started_ —but she supposes that, in theory, she could style it to cover the glowing lines on her forehead. She won’t, because she never wore her hair that way before, but she could.

          It’s her cheeks and chin and neck that are the trouble spots. Nothing she can do if she isn’t going to wear a face mask all the time. Chakwas assures her that the “scars” will disappear with time—that her skin ( _synthetic weave-enhanced epidermal layer_ , she corrects herself, _you’re a goddamn cyborg now, Shepard_ ) will heal and grow back together and there won’t be a mark on her. She doesn’t know if she wants that.

          No, that’s not right. She doesn’t want _that._ But she doesn’t want _this_ either.

          She wants her skin back—her scars, her cells, her freckles, her face, her body. She wants...

          She’d rather be dead.

          She’d rather be dead than be here in this body that is and isn’t hers, staring into this little hand mirror while Chakwas rubs circles on her back because she’s sobbing like a child and damn how did she not realize she’d started crying in the first place?

          “Doc,” she says, her voice creaking like a thirteen year old boy. “What—” She stops. She was going to say _What if I’m not me? What if I’m just a robot or a VI or a clone or..._

          But she’s not going to do this. Not here. Not now.

          She rubs her arm across her face, wipes the tears away as best she can in one quick swipe, and hops off the med bed.

          “Shepard?” Karin says, the furrowed lines between her brows betraying her worry.

          “Nothing Doc,” she lies, voice steeled. There are no new tears and she pledges to herself that there won’t be any more, not for her and not for Shepard, whether Shepard is _really_ her or she’s _really_ Shepard or— “Just wondering what you need me to pick up for the med bay while we’re on Omega.”

          “Oh, Shepard—” Her voice is soft, sweet, slow. Karin Chakwas doesn’t look, doesn’t _sound,_ anything like Shepard’s mother, but that word is all she can think. It’s all she can do, all the strength and caution she can muster, to open her mouth and not say _I’ll be ok, Mama_ just like she’d done so many times back home.

          Instead, she holds up her hand and shakes her head. “I’m fine, Doc. What do you need? New taps for the medi-gel dispensers? Sheets for the beds?” But Karin shakes her head.

          Shepards grins, crooked and wide ( _just like she used to,_ Karin thinks) and says “No scalpels for invasive procedures? No backless nighties for patients? No sedatives for Joker?”

          Karin smiles. “No, Commander, we’re fully stocked. Nothing missing except a bottle of brandy.”

          “Well then, I’ll pick up one of those.”

          “Oh, you needn’t bother with that, dear. We’ve much more important things to—”

          “Save it, Doc. We’ll need something to pop open for the party when this is over.”

          Karin had been joking—she’d had a bottle, her favourite label, tucked away in the drawer of her desk on the original Normandy, but she hadn’t meant for Shepard to take it upon herself to replace such a frivolous luxury. _But,_ she thinks to herself, _I suppose I should have known she would._

          Shepard’s grin tells Karin all she needs to know. She’d come immediately when the call came. She hadn’t hesitated. But on the way to the Cerberus base, on the way to the New Normandy and to the Commander, she’d had those guilt-inducing thoughts. When she’d first seen Shepard marching across the mess to Lawson’s office, she’d visited those thoughts again, but with less anxiety, less worry-driven conviction. When she’d seen Shepard making jokes with the mess sergeant, she’d all but pushed the smallest, quietest whisper of _what if_ from her mind. But now, with Shepard here, with her face still flushed from tears and her back too stiff with frustrated determination and the right corner of her lips pulled up in a mischievous grin— _her_ mischievous grin—Karin has no more questions.

          As Shepard leaves, Karin notes the nervous tug of her collar, the self-conscious drag of fingers through hair to cover as much cheek as inconspicuously possible. Shepard, she knows, still has plenty of questions. But if the Commander has no one else to guide her back home, Doctor Karin Chakwas will always be around to help her along.

          The muffled crackle of the intercom—no doubt having been on the entire time—interrupts her sentimental thoughts and Joker’s voice fills the room, the usual snark unsurprisingly absent.

          “She doing ok, Doc?”

_Make that Doctor Karin Chakwas and Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau,_ she silently amends.

          “She’ll be ok, Joker. You know our Shepard.”

          “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, I do.”


End file.
